Posts Tagged ‘whole milk’

When we got married, I didn’t understand how my husband could possibly drink whole milk {gag me with a spoon}. I was a skim-milk-is-it kind of girl. And I purchased regular, run of the mill milk. Who cares and what’s organic?

A few years later, my stomach-souring research convinced me to buy organic. Organic skim milk, of course. Hold the fat, please.

To make dairy products low fat, it’s not enough to remove fat. You then have to go to great lengths to preserve the body or creamy texture by working in all kinds of food additives. In the case of low-fat or skim milk, that usually means adding powdered milk. But powdered milk contains oxidized cholesterol, which scientists believe is much worse for your arteries than ordinary cholesterol, so food makers sometimes compensate by adding antioxidants, further complicating what had been a simply one-ingredient whole food. Also, removing the fat makes it harder for your body to absorb the fat-soluble vitamins that are one of the reasons to drink milk in the first place. (In Defense of Food, 153-4)

Okay, let’s just eat the whole food {fat and all}.

And then I read Nourishing Traditions. I will spare you the quotes this time, but Fallon makes a great case for drinking raw milk. I must say that somewhere in the deep-way-down-deepity-deep of my heart I believe her. However, it’s illegal to sell it for human consumption in my state. And. And. I just don’t know. Eek.

3. milk from cows feasting on grass in a pasture. (Corn kills cows, y’all, and before it kills them, it makes them sick.)

4. something that was pasteurized just a little. And not a lot.

5. something not homogenized (because it’s just another process)

A few months ago I spied Kalona Super Natural Organic whole milk on the store shelf. It was a match! And it was a little under $4 for a half gallon which was almost the same price I was paying for organic milk from Costco.

I got it home, and my youngest son declared it “sweet and clean.” It is. It is so good.

One of the reasons it’s so sweet and clean is because it’s vat-pasteurized.

We use a process called VAT pasteurization, where a fixed volume of milk in a vat is slowly agitated at 145° Fahrenheit; this process has a uniquely negligible effect on the pure flavor of the milk. Our end product is as close as pasteurized milk can get to farm fresh flavor.

We also choose the VAT process because we believe its lower temperature allows milk to retain more of its nutritional value than other methods of pasteurization (industrial-scale milk operations heat their milk to 171° or higher, Fahrenheit, HTST method, and from 265-300°, Fahrenheit, UHT method). The difference is very easy to understand; overcooked food loses flavor and nutrients.

Am I still talking? Goodness. Let me stop and skip to the handy-dandy graphic of our (r)Evolution.

You will have to do your own research when it comes to milk. Good luck.